Legendary rock superstar David Bowie died this week at the age of 69, after an 18-month long battle with cancer. Bowie’s health problems had been such a well-kept secret, that throughout his declining health, he was recording his final album, Blackstar, which dropped on his 69th birthday. Two days later, he was gone. His passing took the world by such surprise that it literally broke the internet—so many people were streaming David Bowie albums all day long that it was causing critical internet traffic failures in Chicago and Atlanta.
For Bowie to disrupt the internet, of all things, with his passing seems about right. He had spent his entire career doing the unusual and the offbeat, often way ahead of his time. He is called a rock pioneer not for any one thing he did, but for having such a sustained legacy of trying new things and breaking new ground. For him, that was his normal; doing what nobody else was.
